Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

I t had been just over four years ago. Hamish and Amy had been living in happily married bliss in London, with Hamish having obtained a sought-after position as a diplomat, hoping to play his small part in resolving the tension between the Scottish and English to bring peace to his homeland. Everything had been perfect — until Amy, always a shy and quiet woman, caught the eye of an English lord who’d been stumbling home drunk one night. Entranced by her beauty, and antagonized by her refusal to so much as look him in the eye let alone entertain his drunken suit, the man had cornered her. Exactly what had happened, Hamish explained, nobody would ever know. What he did know was that Amy had been found dead in the mouth of an alleyway, two blocks from home.

Hamish had dedicated all of his time and resources to tracking down the man who’d done it, with the help of a few eyewitness accounts from sympathetic neighbors who’d seen the man fleeing the scene. He’d found him eventually, lying low on the other side of London, and it hadn’t taken long to extract a tearful confession. The Lord hadn’t meant to kill her, hadn’t even meant to hurt her — he’d simply wanted to strike her to teach her a quick lesson about being polite to men on the street. But drunk as he was, he’d miscalculated, hitting her hard enough to knock her out — and either that blow, or the blow of her head against the cobblestones, had proved fatal. Amelia, listening with bated breath, knew all too well how serious a head injury could be. Movies often made out as though hitting someone on the head worked the same way that anesthetic did, but the truth was, any blow hard enough to knock a person out ran a serious risk of killing them, too.

And with a curse lingering in the air that was determined to bring about Amy’s untimely death, it was no wonder that the drunken man’s blow had been fatal.

The Lord offered Hamish a groveling apology, offered to pay him reparations for the damage done, offered to fund the most elaborate memorial imaginable for the loss of Amy… but the more he offered, the more numb Hamish had felt. And so he’d done the only thing he could do — he challenged the man to a duel. The lord had accepted, more out of surprise than anything, and a week later, Hamish had killed him.

“Do you regret it?” Amelia asked softly, into the deep silence that followed the end of the story.

“No,” he said, and his answer came too easily to be anything but the truth. “I’ve been told that I should, that taking a man’s life is a sin and to repent, but I cannot find it in my heart to feel anything but righteous about what I did.” He was quiet for a long moment, then he looked up at her again, his blue eyes solemn. “Thank you for hearing me out, Amelia. It must be — strange, hearing about what happened to your ancestor.”

“It must be stranger still to talk about it with someone who looks just like her,” she countered, a weak smile on her face.

“Not at all,” Hamish said. “You’re still the spitting image of her, Amelia. But you’re your own woman, well and truly. I could no sooner mistake you for her again than I could the moon for the sun.”

They said their goodnights not long after that, and she did her level best to ignore the electricity that crackled between them in the dark hallway — the rooms they’d been assigned were neighbors, sharing a wall, and it felt silly to say goodnight anywhere but by their doors. She badly wanted to kiss him, but she stopped herself with a stern reminder that he’d just gone through the harrowing experience of telling the story of the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

Besides, they were both clearly exhausted. She’d barely managed to undress before she was yawning, looking forward to climbing into her narrow but comfortable bed — Hamish hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d praised the accommodation at the village tavern. She drifted quickly into a deep and untroubled sleep.

But when she stirred, something told her right away that something was wrong. The gray light of dawn usually woke her when it spilled through the window, but as her eyelids fluttered open, she realized that it was still pitch dark in her room. A quick glance out of the window confirmed the suspicion — the streets were dark and deserted, and the moon shone brightly through a gap in the thick cloud cover that was blanketing the sky. It was still well and truly the middle of the night. It was unlike her to wake from her sleep for no reason, and as she settled back down beneath the covers, a wary suspicion kept her from falling back to sleep.

It wasn’t long before she heard it — a dull thud against the far wall, and the muffled sound of Hamish’s voice, raised as though in fear or anger. She was up before she knew it, quickly pulling on enough clothing to be somewhat decent if she was seen in the hallway, and she hastened next door before it could occur to her that it might be considered somewhat scandalous to go into a man’s room unaccompanied so late at night. At least he’d left his door unlocked — she’d teased him for his carelessness, especially given how regularly he reminded her to lock her own door, but she was grateful for it now.

He was still asleep when she entered his room, but she could see from the way the bed sheets had tangled around him that he’d been tossing and turning for some time. The patchy moonlight from his window fell across his handsome face, and she could see him frowning as he stirred and turned, muttering unclearly about some threat he was dreaming. Amelia hesitated, torn between waking him from whatever was plaguing him — and feeling a little worried about having stolen into his room in the middle of the night. Besides, didn’t they usually say not to wake people from nightmares? Or was that an old wives’ tale? As she hesitated, frozen with indecision, she heard him call out again. On this side of the wall, his unmuffled voice was as clear as day.

“Amy,” he was saying, his voice thick with fear and sadness. “Amy!”

Before she could think about it, she was moving across the room, taking quiet steps on the creaky wooden floor. When she reached his bedside, she put a careful hand on his shoulder, realizing with a jolt that he wasn’t wearing anything beneath the sheet — at least, not on his top half. Firmly banishing that particular curiosity, she murmured his name as softly as she could, wanting to reassure him but not to startle him. He called her predecessor’s name a few more times, questioning — but that awful fear and pain was gone from his voice, and he seemed to have stilled a little from the thrashing he’d been doing when she’d first opened the door.

“It’s okay,” she heard herself murmuring, keeping her voice low and soothing. “It’s okay, Hamish. Amy’s okay. She’s safe,” she said, not quite sure what was motivating her words, but feeling the strange conviction that what she was saying was true. “She’s safe, and she loves you. Everything’s okay.”

She waited by his side for a curious length of time that could have been minutes or hours, watching him slowly subside back into a restful sleep from whatever nightmare it had been that had disturbed him. She brushed that light auburn hair back from his brow, tousled by sleep, carefully adjusted his bed sheets so they wouldn’t cut into him as much, then gently stroked his cheek. Slowly but surely, the worried crease of his brow eased, and soon enough he was breathing deep and even, his face relaxed and his sharp features more serene than she’d ever seen them.

Finally, she shook herself out of the strange waking reverie she seemed to have entered, and tiptoed her way back across the floor. Her own bed was cold again, and she shivered as she tugged the bed sheets up around her chin, wishing she’d just dived into Hamish’s bed with him instead. Great idea, Amelia, she chided herself. The man was clearly already confused and heartbroken enough about his lost wife without waking up from a nightmare about her to find her doppelganger in his bed. No, she had to keep her distance right now, that much was clear… no matter how she might happen to feel about it.

But unfortunately, as she lay there, she had to admit — if only in the privacy of her own mind — that she had well and truly fallen for Hamish MacClaran. How absolutely, tragically predictable. Another dashing, blue-eyed man with a tragic past and a lot of baggage to unpack.

But part of her couldn’t help but suspect that this time things just might turn out better than they had in her past.